Financial Awareness Quiz 78-

The government has constituted inter-departmental task force to crack down benami firms. The taskforce will consist of the Revenue Secretary and _______.

1.

Ministry of Home Affairs

2.

Ministry of Law and Justice

3.

Ministry of Labour and Employment

4.

Ministry of Corporate Affairs

5.

None of the above

Solution

Answer:

The Union Government has constituted inter-departmental task force comprising members of various regulatory Ministries and enforcement agencies to crack down on benami firms. The task force will be headed by Revenue Secretary and Corporate Affairs Secretary to monitor the actions taken by various agencies.

The government will invest Rs. _____ crore in electronic technology start-ups by 2019.

1.

2200

2.

2100

3.

2400

4.

2600

5.

2500

Solution

Answer: The Union Government is targeting an investment of about Rs. 2,200 crore in start-ups working on new technologies in the electronic sector under the Electronics Development Fund (EDF) by 2019. This investment aims at creating an eco-system to make India a global hub for electronics manufacturing. Earlier, Government had approved Rs.681 crore as seed capital for building a total corpus of over Rs 6,800 crore under the EDF meant to support entrepreneurship and innovation in electronics and IT.

Who has been appointed the new chief of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)?

1.

D R Mehta

2.

Brijesh Mukherjee

3.

Saurav Patra

4.

Ajay Tyagi

5.

Vishesh Sharma

Solution

Answer: Ajay Tyagi, a 1984 batch IAS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre, has been appointed the new chief of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Currently, Tyagi is an additional secretary at the finance ministry’s economic affairs department and will succeed U.K. Sinha, who retires from the post on March 1, 2017. The chairman of SEBI receives a consolidated pay package of Rs 4.5 lakh per month.

What is India's rank in the recently released 2017 International Intellectual Property Index (IIPI)?

1.

45

2.

43

3.

49

4.

40

5.

42

Solution

Answer: India ranked low 43rd among the surveyed 45 nations in 2017 International Intellectual Property Index (IIPI). In this edition, India is just above Pakistan (44th) and Venezuela (45th). The fifth annual index was released by US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Centre (GIPC) in its report titled ‘The Roots of Innovation’.

Helicopter money is a _______ carried out with the cooperation of the central bank.

1.

Monetary Policy

2.

Fiscal Policy

3.

Credit Score

4.

Credit Bureaus

5.

None of these

Solution

Answer: Helicopter money is a Fiscal Policy carried out with the cooperation of the central bank. Helicopter money is a tool of unconventional monetary policy that has been proposed as an alternative to Quantitative Easing (QE) when interest rates are close to zero and the economy remains weak or enters recession. Although the original idea of helicopter money describes central banks making payments straight to individuals, economists have used the term 'helicopter money' to refer to a wide range of different policies, including the 'permanent' monetization of budget deficits which is nothing else than the old-fashioned idea of debt monetization – with the additional element of attempting to shock beliefs about future inflation or nominal GDP growth.

_______ is the use of government revenue collection (mainly taxes) and expenditure to influence the economy.

1.

Monetary Policy

2.

Fiscal Policy

3.

Credit Score

4.

Credit Bureaus

5.

None of these

Solution

Answer: Fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection (mainly taxes) and expenditure to influence the economy. In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection (mainly taxes) and expenditure (spending) to influence the economy. According to Keynesian economics, when the government changes the levels of taxation and government spending, it influences aggregate demand and the level of economic activity. Fiscal policy often attempts to stabilize the economy over the course of the business cycle.

_______ is a monetary policy in which a central bank creates new electronic money in order to buy government bonds or other financial assets to stimulate the economy.

1.

Perverse incentive

2.

Open market operation

3.

Quantitative easing

4.

Stimulus

5.

Debt clock

Solution

Answer: Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy in which a central bank creates new electronic money in order to buy government bonds or other financial assets to stimulate the economy (i.e., to increase private-sector spending and return inflation to its target). An unconventional form of monetary policy, it is usually used when standard monetary policy has become ineffective at combating a falling money supply. A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying specified amounts of financial assets from commercial banks and other financial institutions, thus raising the prices of those financial assets and lowering their yield, while simultaneously increasing the money supply.

To give a boost to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector in the diamond industry which bank has decided to launch a supply chain financing product for small units at concessional rate?

1.

Bank of Maharashtra

2.

Union Bank of India

3.

Punjab National Bank

4.

Bank of Baroda

5.

State Bank of India

Solution

Answer: Bank of Baroda is planning to launch a supply chain financing product for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) in the diamond industry to boost their existence in the sector. The bank will begin the supply chain financing on pilot basis in Surat. Cutting and polishing units, which procure roughs from large companies and supply finished products back, will be provided finance at a competitive rate of interest.

The Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) consists of how many countries?

1.

9

2.

7

3.

10

4.

5

5.

13

Solution

Answer: CEFTA consists of 7 countries. They are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) on behalf of Kosovo. The original CEFTA agreement was signed by the Visegrád Group countries, that is by Poland, Hungary and Czech and Slovak republics (at the time parts of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic) on 21 December 1992 in Kraków, Poland. It came into force in July 1994. Through CEFTA, participating countries hoped to mobilize efforts to integrate into Western European institutions and through this, to join European political, economic, security and legal systems, thereby consolidating democracy and free-market economics. The agreement was amended by the agreements signed on 11 September 1995 in Brno and on 4 July 2003 in Bled. Slovenia joined CEFTA in 1996, Romania in 1997, Bulgaria in 1999, Croatia in 2003 and Macedonia in 2006.